dogma-diggity

a few days ago, i posted about my new eating habits and the success i'm having. i feel better too.

as with most things, there are plenty of on-line resources devoted to this and i've been participating in several fora. it's encouraging to read the success stories of women my age, staggering to see just HOW MUCH weight some people need to lose -- 100's of pounds in some cases -- and informative to get updated on new science. it's also shocking to see how uninformed so many people are about food basics. knowledge is power and it has been very helpful, especially in the first few days before my books had arrived.

like anyplace on-line there are the zealots and they tend to be prolific. there are a few, who have lost almost no weight, or a mere pound or so over many months, and still feel fit to preach. erm, really, lady? i'm empathetic to resistant bodies and hormones and such, especially after years of abuse, but the fatties lose the fastest at first. whatcha doing wrong and why should i heed ANY of your advice? careful that soapbox don't crack under your girth, mmmmkay?

there are the temperance zealots too. clearly over-indulging in alcohol is not a good idea when trying to lose weight. your body will burn that before tackling any other fuel, it's useless calories and often can be an inhibition-buster, leading to eating some junk you shouldn't or wouldn't while sober. yes, all my friends are alcoholics and we drink more than the general population. i know that. bearing that in mind, an occasional couple of drinks is not going to end your world. a woman posted today about a "girls' night out". it's been months since they all saw each other -- you know, blah-blah-blah. she innocently asked what might be the least detrimental thing to consume. here was one of the answers:

Why can't you have a night out and stay cold sober?
Did you know that your body will burn alcohol first and not burn fat? That it might take some time to get back into fat-burning mode?
Would it be worth it?

every party has a pooper, lady. jeebus. if she's asking the question the way she did, she knows it may cause a bump in the weight-loss highway, ok? lighten the hell up.

lastly, there is the data-nazi. i have been tracking my food, just to make sure i'm doing this "right" and remain sensitive to my utter failure at trying nearly everything else, but am beginning to feel secure enough that i might soon let go of that. early on it was very helpful because once i started getting the proper amounts of veggies (hadn't been eating enough), the weight started to drop. knowledge is power. yes.

the data-nazi actually gained weight her first few months on the plan. rather than change what she was doing, she yada-yada-d everybody else. finally, the on-site nutritionist stepped in to suggest some things she might consider tweaking? voila. a wee bit of weight lost. she plans all her meals to the gram and will adjust menus so that every day she eats exactly the same number of calories in exactly the same proportions. she is a screecher about the minimum number of calories people need to consume each day. ya know what? bullshit. a 6-foot woman needs way more calories per day to move herself around than i do at only 5'2". the reason she had gained weight to begin with on this plan? she was eating too fucking much.

she carps on people to eat when they aren't hungry. "to keep up your blood sugar" and "to keep your metabolism burning." a) isn't that how lots of folks got fat to start? and b) your body will burn far more efficiently and less superficially if it has to reach down into its reserves. constantly feeding sends the wrong signals to your brain and it becomes harder to feel sated if your stomach is always working on digestion.

she is a maniac about fiber. i worried about this at first, but there is sufficient fat in my day to keep things moving along nicely. ahem. there is plenty of evidence that contradicts the numbers recommended by the usda. that much of what you consume that way is actually irritating your lower g.i., not helping it. think about it: insoluble fiber passes through your system more or less intact. why give your body all that extra work?

so here's my point (finally, noodle, tyvm!): when researching and then committing to this experiment i was willing to toss out all of the "conventional wisdom" which i had held so dearly for so long. all. of. it. the stuff that made me overweight and feel unwell more often than not. let go of everything, try a thoroughly new approach and see what happened. i'm not saying i did it overnight. i spent a year going through a revolving door of no-results. but making such a dramatic change made me open to just about anything else that didn't sound like a snake oil pitch. i'm happy with that.

no, not everybody

i do actually know people i like, who don't suck, ok?

this week was the owner's birthday and i was invited up to shangri-lowell to share the festivities. small-world and all, he shares his big day with one of his neighbors, whom we both like quite alot. last year we partied together and this year was to make 2 in a row.

suppressed rebellion was still working its way out of his system in '08, so the owner was determined to "get drunk", lol, which isn't really his thing anymore. this time out a more low-key evening was in the cards. we did have the bonus of a driver happy to be designated, just in case.

not long ago we discovered a little out-of-the-way laotian place, whose proprietors and only staff are a daughter and her f.o.b mother. the former is a pistol and the latter cooks like a tiny southeast asian rockstar. the specialty of the house is meat, all kindsa ways, which, as we all know, thrills the owner. yo, even i liked the tongue there, ok? so we brought the other b-day guys, a cooler and 4 big appetites. it was a blast.

with rain falling and wind acting up as the start of tropical storm danny, we figured that night's park concert had been moved indoors, so indulged ourselves with purple sticky rice pudding topped with a kick-ass coconut custard and another drink.

surprise! w00t! the concert was in full-swing, outside, when we arrived. the weather forecast had skeered away most of the audience so we sauntered right up front and got down. plenty of crapola zydeco bands slide through the lowell music calendar, but these guys were terrific -- even deemed so by the native new orleanian (orleander? wtf are they called?) amongst us. the air was only misty, the grass somehow didn't feel damp and since all the human wet blankets stayed home afraid of meeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllting, many more folks were dancing all around than is usually tolerated by the determined sitters at these things. even the owner had the hip-sway thang!

(it was almost like my birthday too, since the keyboard player was a midget! yes! strangely long fingers like gollum's and all of us agreed we'd never seen a little person in a regular band. that's high confirmation with a professional musician among us, as well as the 10's of 1000's of shows likely under the rest of our blown-out eardrums.)

the show wrapped with an a capella solo by the singer in tribute to ted kennedy. he prefaced by mentioning how much the south loved the kennedy's -- he pointedly referred to the "real south", which was not lost on the crowd -- especially louisiana, a deeply catholic state, home to colorful and corrupt politicos that could rival our own, as well as emk's beloved second wife, vickie. he sang the "star-spangled banner" and it moved me and everybody else like it should have.

that was it.

good food, good music, good friends. a very good time. i'm a lucky lady.

people suck, redux

tail-end of a tropical storm dampening the city today and hiding anything over 4 stories in fog. nothing worth battening down the hatches, but it's soggy and dreary, the tail-end of summer grasping for autumn.

there seemed a window of climatic decency when i was exiting the commuter station so i hotfooted to haymarket in just a mere drizzle.

lurking in some doorway, a tubby old guy in light blue shorts, oh-so-smartly accessorized with a white belt, whom i would not have noticed except he had this to say: "guess this is a bad hair day, huh?"

what went through my head in a flash, far faster than words aloud ever can travel, was, " well, gee, gramps, i just got my brains fucked out quite well twice in 7 hours, spent some time before that dancing in the rain with good friends and the man of my dreams, and just didn't have time to get cover-shoot primo before catching your eye."

what i said was, " sweet-talk all the ladies like that?"

did he read that idiotic book by that douche that recommends "reverse complimenting" (i.e. insulting) chicks to get their attention? or is he just a complete asshole?

i'm quite sure he gets laid right regular, lmao. :o

on its head

over the last months i have engaged in what at times felt like an epic battle to lose some weight -- a struggle met only with my body's fiercest refusal. weighing my food, counting calories, exercising up to 2 hours a day, interval training, insane cardio, weight lifting, intermittent fasting, multi-day fasting, gargantuan amounts of fiber. except for a 48-hour fast in early july, (enacted out of terror for an ultimatum) when i was down 2.7 pounds, the scale hasn't budged south at all. it has, however, spiked up. oh, goody. here -- don't have a cookie.

i tried all sorts of food navigating, particularly on work-out days when i had the appetite of goliath once home from the gym. not in the morning, not before, not after, not after 6:00. only complex carbs. only fruit. only salad with cheese. only protein. only carbs plus protein. nothing helped and i was hungry most of the time.

oh, but muscle weighs more than fat, you say? well, no it doesn't. (who the hell got that math so wrong back whenever?) a pound of chicken weighs the same as a pound of pizza. i did not get smaller in inches either, so phooey.

the well-being obtained through regular exercise? did i *feel* better? not significantly, no, although i am not averse to believing that my lack of pay-off hindered my mind-set.

there is much i am willing to attribute to age and my ever increasingly ornery hormones. nothing i can do about any of that. words fail me to express the feeling of utter despair which results only in disgust. compound that personal disappointment with the owner's well-intentioned and repeated message, "you just don't exercise right/hard enough/often enough" and "why should i have a fat girlfriend?" and yeah, it just was never a good day at the noodle farm.

3 weekends ago, the scale was higher than it has been in a year. immediately i dutifully counted my calories and ounces consumed and ate lots of fiber. i was cold-turkey off alcohol.

in 3 days? nothing and i felt just awful. when people i know cut out drinking, pounds melt away like they went for brazilian basement liposuction. a few years back, when i just couldn't kick what felt like avian flu, i also gave up drinking, with the same outcome. my symptoms did not abate and i lost zero weight. the sandman went on vacation because i simply could not get decent rest.

finally, einstein and ben franklin rose up out of the ether and 3-stooged my blockhead. why was i expecting different results when i'd been trying the same thing over and over? dumbass.

most of my adult life i have taken smug satisfaction in "eating well": whole wheat bread, fruits, yogurt, veggies, LOTS of fiber, smatterings of lean protein; no processed foods, no fast foods, cake/candy/ice cream were never a temptation. although very active in my 20s, later on, my weight stayed fairly constant, which i attributed to 90 minutes of brisk daily walking with my big dog and a "healthy diet". i never counted calories and my clothes always fit.

the pound creep began at about 40, which was my mother's exact "danger, will robinson" date of when everything in a woman's body goes to shit. last summer i managed to dump some. i wasn't on mandatory weigh-ins back then, so not sure how truly much, but fit in a few things that hadn't seen my ass in several years. that was great but when that *new* number seemed carved in stone, i was really a mess.

good modern gal that i am, i dove into the internet, with the conviction to put aside conventional wisdom.

i decided to be a lab of one. i had nothing to lose except fat.

some very convincing science looked to answer questions that had nagged me for years. the technique offered was to burn down the food pyramid and turn my diet upside down. instead of 60-70% coming from carbs, that amount is now from fat. ideal protein amount remains about the same at 30-35%, with carbs being a long-distance 3rd. goodbye white starch and hello butter.

i ordered cheap-cheap books and while i waited for the snail mail to arrive, trolled the sites of various scientists and a few wackos. "fat is evil and deadly" ringing in my brain nearly drowned out the new message and it was a tough first few days watching that pool of olive oil heat up before i dumped all those eggs in the pan. kinda like i don't believe in god, but if he came to visit in the flesh, ok? that hard a sell.

the first few days, i was sort of bumbling, not having sufficient info to do it "right". i was convinced my internal system of regulation was very broken, so i wasn't hoping for a magic bullet. just something. anything. the testimonials of so many sounded too good to be true, and i was not in the market for a bridge or florida swampland. granted many of these peeps had over 100 pounds to lose, some 2 or 3 times that, which was at once terrifying and fascinating. however, those with the most girth lose in the beginning most easily, so i noted that too.

what happened? within 24 hours:

i slept like a baby.
i wake up easily and clear-headed.
i no longer got headachy or dizzy from being hungry.
my stomach felt the hunger, not my head.
i felt very full after a meal, and that satisfaction lasted for hours.
i wasn't constantly thinking i needed a "little something" to tide me over til the next meal.
my hair is softer.
my joints are less creaky and way less noisy.
my teeth are cleaner.
my senses of taste and smell are even keener.

i am losing weight.

the holy grail.

since the day of reckoning i have lost 10.5 pounds. in the last 4 days, i have lost 3.5. i haven't gotten the "woosh" that many do, but that just lends further credence to how damaged my switch really is. years of imbalance made it really busted. i didn't gain all these pounds overnight. i had a cautious goal weight for tomorrow. i reached it yesterday! today i was up 2/10ths, but AT the tomorrow weight, so i'm not sobbing in a heap right now.

the owner mentioned this morning how i seem re-energized in something else. it's remarkable how finally achieving a positive result in one arena spills over to others.

i have a long long way still to go and yesterday i thought i might kill a toddler for his peach. i could smell its sweet summer juice many paces away, lol. but things i thought i would crave i don't, which will make this easier. if it takes me longer than some of the miracle kids, i'm ok with that too. it will mean a longer time to discipline myself into new habits.

the owner is thrilled because i no longer frown at his fatty dinner desires and i am enjoying my new normal. and knowing i might someday take the skinny clothes from the bottom back to the top of the pile. :)

it's her own fault

last friday a guy stabbed his girlfriend numerous times, in the abdomen, apparently during a dispute in which she refused to get an abortion.

the woman remains in hospital in critical condition, 5 days after the attack.

now the police are saying it appears the woman may not have been pregnant.

she is 28, the boyfriend had just turned 18, and according to his mother, was trying to break it off with his mrs. robinson. the mother wonders why a woman 10 years older would want to date her son "anyway".

this would not have been the first time in the history of the world a desperate woman has lied about a bun in the oven to snare a guy through guilt. although in this era of at-home preggers tests, i'm thinking it's not a ruse that can be kept up for long.

but apparently the mom feels the over-the-hill hussy got what she deserved. it's her own fault for messing with somebody "too" young. let's pass out an early "mother of the year" award here to somebody who grew a son who solves a baby dispute with a knife. shall we?

christ on toast.

as seen here

in a movie yesterday, there was a scene with 2 women friends and one of their husbands enjoying dinner.

j: i hate my friends. is that weird?
c: no. we all hate our friends.
m: men like their friends.
c: who's talking about men? all women hate their friends.

lol, but le sigh, eh?

oh, the irony!

an article on restaurants being forced to list calorie counts for menu items featured the director of the rudd center for food policy and obesity at yale. each year he teaches a class called "the psychology, biology, and politics of food" which attracts over 200 students. time magazine named dr. brownell one of "the world's 100 most influential people" in 2000.

he looks like this:
he takes credit for coining the term "yo-yo dieting" and i'd wager a big mac or 3 that he's been on that roller coaster a time or 2.

do we really want somebody obviously obese dictating national nutrition policy? (never mind the whole piss-me-off nanny-state meddling issue of posting kcal counts anyway.) is this the lunatics running the asylum, or is it simply a case of "those who can't do, teach?"

bad-ass babes

through the generosity of others, i was a regular concert machine last week and my final blow-out was with debbie harry and pat benatar.

this was at the pavilion now named and licensed by i'm not sure whom anymore, but it's right on the water and it was a perfect night. it was my 1st visit to this venue and i will bitch: the sight lines are terrible and the not-so-jumbotron pictures were even worse. you're also fenced in like at a super-max and cannot even remotely glimpse the water.

another back in the day, of "i saw blondie at the channel" and they killed it then and now. she was an icon of cool for me from my first listen in junior high and she just played hit after hit saturday. i'd forgotten how creepy "one way or another is," lol. she's clearly had some nipping and tucking, but she looked terrific. never had a huge vocal range, but she sounded the same, and owned the stage in a leather skirt and chuck taylors, lol. i just could not get it out of my head that she is only 2 years younger than my mother -- who is in a wheel chair and mostly out to lunch. wtf.

benatar's anthems were part of my soundtrack too, but she was always a bit too arena rock to get my "cool" label, even while i could admire her pipes. her slicing and dicing wasn't as recent as deb's, but she looked great and could still hit the notes. her sound mix was not primo that night which was disappointing. it was mostly drums drowning her absolutely out for the first 5 or 6 numbers! i had no idea her band had been the same (but for 1) for 30 years! there was a vague awareness on my end that her husband was sort of the maestro and i was totally blown away by his playing. ok, 5 out of the 6 of us were put off by how show-offy he was. yeah, yeah you can strut the stage and wail on your "axe" (must you call it that?) during "love is a battlefield", but shut up with your windy yapping and that schticky mambo-italiano in between songs, ok?

mostly chicks in the audience and i was totally surprised by the broad age range. plenty of women who were too young ever to have heard blondie before the reunion and just as many in stretchy comfort slacks older than deb. did the yhoung ones realize how ground-breaking blondie had been? "rapture"?

as a sidebar, i was the only of my friends not drinking and i think this may have been my only ever totally sober musical experience in my whole life. it was plenty fun. and beers were frigging $11! there was a very tall ostrich-like lady right near me drinking red wine in what looked to be a mouthwash cup. cannot imagine what they served or how much they gouged for it. no, she did not look *classy*, but we all did get to make fun of her.

peta

"people espousing toddler abuse." just in case you forgot how nutso these guys can be:

Children who buy meals at the McDonald’s at 391 Central Ave. today beginning at noon will encounter PETA staff, headed by an activist in a chicken costume.

The “Unhappy Meal” that PETA will give to children — a spoof of a Happy Meal — will include a “menacing, knife-wielding” Ronald McDonald cutout, a ketchup packet disguised as chicken blood, a plastic chicken covered in “blood” and a “McCruelty” t-shirt.

so yeah, they are totally going to make babies cry and give your kids nightmares if you try to treat the small fry to fast food in albany today. to save the chickens.

people are stoopid -- redux

this weekend the sales tax here went from 5% to 6.25% and for weeks locals have been bitching and moaning and talking radio heads have been yapping about a 25% hike. they've been warning of the flood of shoppers who will bust new hampshire's gates and instead of bumping our budget, drain it dry. can we just for a second think about this? say you're going to hopeless depot to buy some potted plants and a pink flamingo for your yard and your budget is $100. how much will you spend on gas (never mind the time factor) to save $1.25? ahem.

long ago, the commonwealth was denigrated as "taxachusetts", but that shoe no longer fits (it just costs a bit more.) of the 45 states that have a general sales tax, we rank last in terms of the revenue the sales tax raises as a percentage of personal income.

an intrepid globe reporter went to the mall to talk to shoppers on saturday. just a direct paste, cuz you can't make this stuff up:

Take José Fonts, who complained about the tax boost as he waited for his daughter yesterday at the Natick Collection.

“It’s ridiculous,’’ he said. “I can tell you, I’m going to go to the next state to buy stuff.’’

But wait - what about the additional tax on the plaid Tommy Hilfiger comforter he had just bought, still wrapped in its plastic package?

Fonts lifted his hand to his forehead in surprise.“I didn’t think of it!’’ he said.

still got it

67 years old and one of britain's richest people, he could easily just stay in one of his mansions eating tofu and counting his money. instead sir paul rocked fenway park last night for 2 1/2 hours, playing 30 songs from both the way-back machine as well as brand new stuff from his current outfit fireman.

our seats were waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay away from the stage, so i know it wasn't me he was winking at, but he was crystal clear on the digital jumbotron and you could see he was having a ball. sending out the love and getting it right back. smiling and slim in red suspenders, he owned the night.

i bought my first beatles record before i hit my teens, and then wound up collecting pretty much all of them. wings never really rocked my world, but going through
last night's set list it's truly amazing to realize how deeply he's woven into our cultural fabric. we all knew all the words, but he was absolutely not going through the motions.

he played the still-so-lovely "something" on a ukulele that george harrison had given him, while a montage of harrison played behind him under the giant moon. "blackbird", one of my favorites, was in there too and he played it solo on-stage. he talked about john and played "let it be", and "give peace a chance" brought a chanting crowd to its feet.

"eleanor rigby", "helter skelter" and "a day in the life", showed their complexity but a fun bopper like "i saw her standing here" or "back in the ussr" was great too.

no lip-syncing, no dancing girls, no midgets being shot out of cannons, no spectacles. ok, there were fireworks during "live and let die" (which he killed, btw), but they were all the more thrilling because the night was just about paul, his tight-tight band and a half-century of fantastic music. he looks great, his voice still sounds amazing, his playing was flawless.

2 long encores and he finished up with "sgt. pepper" segued into "the end". perfect.


postscript: while i was watching the legend and having him prove just that and then some, a different sort of legacy, the man and recovered trainwreck that is steven tyler, fell off the stage in south dakota, while singing "love in an elevator." he was taken to the emergency room in sturgis. how's that for night & day, my friends?

defining crazy

today's previous posts aren't in anyway supposed to be a testament to my superior and serene sanity or to infer that the pony i ride isn't looped on applejack most times i saddle up.

when you get down to it, i often engage in what 99% of the world would consider extreme craziness, with the emotional and physical s & m that is so central to my relationship being just the tip of my barmy iceberg. mostly, i share very little of what we do. years ago i tossed off a casual remark about a surprise stunt by the owner (he "broke in" while i was in the shower, scaring the daylights out of me, lol) and my dear loving friend said in all earnestness that i needed to set some boundaries. there i was, deer in the headlights, unwilling to explain our deal was "no limits". that mine had ceased to matter and we now only kept his as the border.

his authority being absolute is something else that would send my friends running for the butterfly net. "why can't you just tell him no?" yup-- heard that a time or two hundred. even on a forum where others purport to live within a similar framework, the bottoms seemingly get a pass whenever the wind blows up their whimsy. i don't feel well, i'm tired, i don't want to, all swing the power right their way, where as for me it may be offered as an explanation, but it will never be tolerated as an excuse. if he wants it and wants me in it, i do NOT get to opt out. ever. we don't compromise or negotiate. we. just. don't.

people look at us and remark how in love we seem, that they've never known a couple who laugh together as much, and i so often think "if they only knew!"

so while i most often engage in behaviors that many would consider on the extreme end of decidedly not normal it works for me and for us. the owner frequently crows about how happy he is and how good his life is, and when i'm not driving myself cuckoo about something or other, i allow myself a little pleasure in knowing i'm part of that.

what has this to do with the drum-banger, already, right?

she went on and on and ON about behaviors that impact her negatively and how she had determined to cut the shit and have her life on her terms. a few glasses of wine later, she was proving einstein's definition of insanity, and manically ping-ponging about for casual sex, which she claimed not to want, with a guy who clearly had other broads on the brain. double fail, there, girly.

she blurted out: "he doesn't think i'm pretty!" which nearly knocked us all out of the park. huh? i stoopidly asked/said, "he did not say that!" which only opened the bruised ego floodgates because his nonchalant rejection must mean that she was ugly. gaaah. nope. he fucked you once, so he found appeal, ok? that you text and call him incessantly since, however (a professional drummer who lives in ny, ffs, with whom she also had some sort of sex melt-down) only shows him the bunny in a stockpot in his future.

why are you making it our responsibility to make you feel validated about the lack of your own? this scene has played out before with this woman and i just won't take the bait anymore. cuz i'm not a nice person, go ahead, say it. she's also the one to toss off that i can't feel her pain because i have somebody, conveniently forgetting my long lonely struggles as "the other woman" and then the black hole of my abandonment. she may as well put her hands over her ears when i offer that i knowingly became involved with a married man and him trying to repair his legal union did not make him a jerk. i had only myself to blame for keeping myself no place i belonged.

a desperate woman smells like brand-new dogshit to a man and he will cross the street through high-speed traffic rather than step in it. instead of being in the moment, out with friends, who knows, maybe meeting a guy, she spent the night flagellating herself and only feeling worse about a dead end. a door that had closed as soon as she left his hotel months ago, k?

both the owner and our drummer friend offered that "she's not that bad." to be generous, i know that. the lowell paper is frequently full of angry chicks who take all sorts of pointy implements to men's tender bits, while the only one she harms is herself. over and over, like a cutter.

even as a masochist though, that strikes me as the definition of sadness. trying to force these guys to bend in ways they don't want, ignoring signals as big and bright as sky-flares and coming up empty EVERY time. they scream RED in your face and you just hear 'lalalala".

plenty of women succeed in sucking the life out of the man they claim to love and the men are complicit in the demolition. no matter how much i say it, and how much they see it, none of my friends will admit that the best way simply is to let him be. allow him to be the man he is and wants to be for you. amazing how quickly you can parse a bad fit, but you then also have to be willing to walk away, long before he runs from your kung-fu grip trying to salvage what's left of his balls.

it doesn't make you a bad person to walk and it's not the scent of failure that clings when a guy turns out not to be "the one."

we all make choices. she will not admit she chooses to be miserable. who's gonna tell her? i'm not that not nice, regardless of what you may think.

more crazy than evah

according to reuters today prescriptions written for americans for anti-depressants doubled between 1996 and 2005. 27 million people were on anti-blues pills. although there was little change in total promotional spending for antidepressants between 1999 ($0.98 billion) and 2005 ($1.02 billion), direct-to consumer marketing jumped from 3.3 percent ($32 million) to 12 percent ($122.00 million). those frowny people schlubbing about in bathrobes and dirty hair on tv hit home, eh?

in 2008, 164 MILLION scripts were written for these pills.

good god, people, have a cocktail ffs. or sex, or something.

many people with whom i have worked are on something, and many of them are on more than one thing. i'm surprised the figure is as low as 10% of the population, but this number does not include anti-anxiety, anti-nightmare or sleeping drugs. recently i watched a woman empty her purse, looking for *that one pill* out of a staggering assort of brown bottles -- at least 10. a deep breath would not have calmed your nerves, after something that stressed you out was already over? something anyway you dreamed up? white, middle-aged, upper-middle-class lady -- yup. the study also notes the numbers among blacks did not rise. hello, health care divide writ large? not to say minorities might be less sad, but to show they ain't going to the doctor to boo-hoo cuz they can't.

hmo's give very small allowances for talk therapy, which many studies have shown to be far more effective than drugs for curing depression, but a $10 co-pay for a mother's little helper is ok by them.

i'm not trying to make light of something that can be debilitating, but really? 164 million lil bottles flying off the shelves last year?

that's messed in the head.

how will you ever learn to cope with life's true curveballs if every time you have to swallow the solution?

years ago, i had a mountain of stressors and was having panic attacks, paired up with insomnia that lasted for days. the lack of sleep was making me truly nutty and delusional. the anxiety popped up at the worst times and i was heavily self-medicating. full bottles of vodka would not knock me out. finally at the doctor, i had a full-blown panic attack right in front of her, just trying to describe all the crazy that was in my life. she gave me two prescriptions, described what each would do, how they would work in tandem and what to expect. she was ADAMANT this was a temporary solution, because one of the pills was addictive. she gave me 6 months' worth.

finally able to sleep and think rationally, i sorted out many of the knots and got off both pills in less than 3 months. the lack of night-time rem's, i think, had been the bigger culprit, because my mind never rested and it just got more and more confused and less able. fascinating the mind-body connection when it's so badly running amok.

still sometimes, sleep doesn't always favor me the way i'd like and after a few days i can feel my inner agitation ratcheting up. but i trained myself to not get anxious about being anxious and that seems to work. free-floating anxiety is all self-induced -- i KNOW that -- but don't know that i'll ever conquer that pesky little demon. i do know i want to look him in the face with a clear gimlet eye, not through a meds haze. suck it up, all that. works.

i'll give ya krazee

this weekend i got a spontaneous invite to an outdoor concert. "sure." the owner phoned and free live music (unless it's neil diamond) is a gimme for him. all good.

making plans with women is always an annoying crapshoot -- my hair, my shoes, my cat -- and the timing is like liquid mercury. cell phones only enable this as evidenced by the 4 calls and various texts i got making the meet time later and later. in between these, i got a confidential call that the whole thing is a ploy for one of us to get near a drummer she'd been near before. whatever, but it's apparently ratcheting up her krazee and frantic is entering the realm of applicable adjectives.

a few more crossed signals and we finally all connect and the soothing libations begin. ahhhhh.

let's digress a bit? the drummer-banger is one of those women who i feel "overshares." several years ago, when in my book she was simply a work acquaintance, i got a shocking earful of the should-be-hbo movie that is her dad's sex life and her subsequent emo upheaval. over time, i've heard more and more stories of utterly loco behavior, mostly involving men, sex and more emotions. (as we know i have no trouble separating the third right the hell away from the other two, but i'm learning that's unusual.)

one of the more recent was of her chasing down some handsome stranger, stalking him from bar to bar, but finally her persistence paying off with a hotel room invite. during the *act* she completely deranged into hysterical sobbing, "what am i doing here, with you, this is wrong, you could kill me, this is so bad, i'm stoopid..." howzabout that for a major boner killer? a stranger in a strange land, thinking he's getting lucky with an attractive one-night stand, now panicked, worrying that a visit from the cops might be in the very near future. how's that gonna play in topeka? but he did what she obviously wanted and comforted her and patted her hair, all "there, there" and she calmed down and went home. he never got to finish fucking her. however, after the drama whooshed out, i'm sure a skin flick rental and washcloth did the trick with zero angst.

as these evenings usually go, the conversation was mostly about her, her empty love life, how casual sex is not the thing she should be doing because it puts her in a bad place, blah blah. ok, if you realize that, good on you, but i'm telling you if your opening gambit is "i'm looking for a serious relationship," i suggest you buy a lot more cats and an industrial vibrator.

time for the show with her drummer. the sound is abysmal, the crowd is boring and the set-up makes getting a beer a pipe dream. the owner wonders how long we have to stay and be polite. i think we stayed one more song, it was going to be a short set anyway, so we book across the street. she tizzies in and is obsessing about what wine to drink. i give her strong professional advice to not have wine. another professional in the group concurs. she is *that* girl grilling a very harried bartender about flavor profiles (it's jug wine lady, stfu) and then wah-wah-wah when it's the insipid nonsense i swore it would be.

woven between those complaints is how will she get to see and bang the drummer again. she is overwrought. i haven't seen anything like it since junior high. i wanted to laugh, but that would just further illustrate my "not a nice person" status. her emotional contortions were truly staggering, especially after her firm foot on the ground of no-not intimate-oh-he-loves-only-me sex. back and forth to try to see this guy, for whom dozens of other girls were lined up and tossing their bewbies front and center for the nightly groupie pick. she finally gave up and was next to tears.

ok, so, you don't want nsa sex, fresh from a battery of std tests from some other dirty dude and yet you're freaking out because some guy said, "not tonight, my foot hurts"? lame on his end, yeah, lol, but he doesn't owe you an explanation, ok? leave him alone. she was so wild in her desperation for validation she missed by a mile the fact of "if he wanted to see/fuck you, he would have called."

in an electric whirlwind of crushed ego, she stomped out and went home.

it was weird because we all were glad she was finally out of our night and done crushing our collective buzz, but her searing pain was all over her twisted face. yet, as a not-nice-person, i saw it was all self-inflicted and came from lala-land. somebody needs to shake her, i swear. that cagney grapefruit in the face thing? over and over and over.

chapter 2.

the owner calls last night and wants to fix up drum-banger with another drummer of our acquaintance. the concept was so foreign i at first had no idea he meant THAT drum banger since we know other women with her same name. i pleaded and begged him to not.

"but this drummer likes crazy."

fair enough and this is not to put myself in any other realm besides that of the committed and admittedly krazee, but the covenant of fix-ups for men is far different than it is for chicks.

on the penis side, he goes out with her, sees the plain-as-day looniness and later says, "that chick is nutz." "i told you. let's get a beer." the end.

for me? i would have to fend off why is he asking out one of my friends whom he hasn't met, when he's met others. "what's wrong with me?" and that whole dramz of wounded pride. then there will be the jagged distress of after, of will he or won't call again. i should/n't have fucked him. then "why won't he, where is he, can't you talk to him, what did i do wrong? why did you fix me up with that user?"

it was utterly selfish on my part, yes. if i knew for sure she would at least fuck him, i would not have been half as reluctant, but to get the sword in that stone we need an arthur, ya know? after trying to reason this out with the owner, i had to try to parse it for the drummer. he has a history of crazy he kept saying. gaaaahhhhh.

still dunno where the coin flip will land for our drummer. i know he's a guy and won't think any less of me for having batshit friends. i don't know why he's a good-looking drummer without a date for a pricey concert.

i do know why i have so few female friends.